


promise (you'll wait for me only)

by absolutesilennce



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Found Family, Growing Old Together, Hurt/Comfort, Living Together, Major Character Undeath, Mentions of Panic Attacks, dani and jamie deserved to grow old together and that's the hill i will Undie on, peter quint is mentioned in this exactly one (1) time and even that is too much, yes the ending was beautiful and poignant yes i'm ignoring it we exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:02:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27152182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absolutesilennce/pseuds/absolutesilennce
Summary: Dani can feel herself cracking; brittle like glass and just as sharp, and if she breaks now it’s Jamie who’ll end up bleeding, Jamie who’ll suffer, and Dani can’t–ordani and jamie, and the fix-it we all deserve
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie, Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma (mentioned)
Comments: 108
Kudos: 681





	promise (you'll wait for me only)

**Author's Note:**

> hello fellow non-heteros how do you do
> 
> no editing, we die like men (and also, my friend who i'd usually ask to edit this hasn't seen the show so yknow)
> 
> i have to tell y'all, i've never felt such a compulsive urge to write as i did with this fic, i'm legitimately happy with how it turned out and i hope y'all have fun reading it. it hurts a little at the beginning but i swear i fix it okay. thank you to marija and aleks for listening to me screaming about this for days, ur the real mvps; and lari, who i've teased with this fic for days IM SORRY OK HERE IT IS FINALLY
> 
> title is from _promise_ by ben howard; also there's a stellar playlist (if i do say so myself) that i used to fuel my angst while writing this so like... here's the [spotify link](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zSVDPCFWX9VaUgkY1WJfp?si=PDtucF6TQ3iVZvHkbIfCtQ) if you want it for some Zest™

* * *

**⁂**

**_"_** ** _t_** ** _hey asked:_ ** _do you love her to death?_ _  
_**_i said:_ ** _speak of her over my grave_ _  
__and watch how she will bring me back to **life**."_

_-mahmoud darwish_

**⁂**

* * *

“It’s quiet, but it’s not peaceful.”

When Dani said it all those years back in the Bly Manor, it was already a familiar concept. She’d spent years avoiding her reflection in fear of it staring back with those haunting headlights, but there was nothing she could do to avoid quiet moments that let her dwell on the biting guilt that lingered in the back of her mind. Quiet was the furthest thing away from peace even then.

The Lady of the Lake, though…

She’s not quiet. She’s certainly not peaceful.

It’s strange and difficult to explain, and Dani has tried many times over the years. Jamie is the one who initiates those conversations, always, and Dani tries her best to describe the feeling of another person – entity? – living in her.

The closest she can come is describing it as an itch. (She recalls Peter, that coward, that _bastard_ , calling Miles _a tickle, way down at the bottom_. Dani hates that she understands him now.) Jamie loves to trail her fingers absent-mindedly over the skin of Dani’s forearm, or her thighs, or her stomach – wherever she can reach when she’s reading or watching the telly. Over time, the patch of skin she’s scratching becomes numb, and then irritated. 

That’s how the itch of the Lady of the Lake feels.

She doesn’t scream, or talk, or even whisper; she’s quiet, but the kind of unsettling quiet of the calm before the storm. Often, Dani feels like a ship stranded in the middle of the ocean with the dark clouds looming just a breath away, ready to pull Dani into the waves and all the way down to the murky bottom. 

Her itch is always there, always present, lurking just beneath the surface and Dani finds herself holding her breath in preparation of being dragged under. The Lady’s touch itches in a way Jamie’s soothing caresses never do; persistent and ominous and chilling.

With Jamie, though, it lessens. Fades. To the point that Dani forgets, sometimes, that it’s even there in the first place.

Like the plants she loves so much, Jamie takes root in Dani, burrows deep into her until all she knows are roots and branches and life. Dani loves her so much it aches. What a juxtaposition; the pain of the Lady, dull and never-ending, versus the lovely, enchanting ache of loving Jamie. It comes in waves, overwhelming at times and soft, soothing in others, and Dani feels tethered to something for the first time in her life.

Jamie – beautiful, radiant Jamie – loves her too. She says as much that one afternoon in their – _their!_ – flower shop, but she shows it far before that. Through glances under those long eyelashes, through fingers on Dani’s cheeks that leave smudges of dirt along her cheekbones, through every cheeky “ _Poppins_ ”, every mind-shattering kiss; even the memories of an interrupted panic attack and concerned looks across the dining table are tinged with the rosy glow of love Jamie holds for Dani.

Maybe Dani’s always loved her; maybe Jamie’s always loved her back. It certainly feels that way.

They’ve got a nice little flat above the flower shop, a cozy space that cost more than it was worth but it’s another thing that’s solely theirs, a tiny piece of Earth to share and shape whichever way they fancy. There’s an assortment of teas on the shelves in the kitchen – Dani’s still not allowed to touch any of it – and paintings and framed drawings on the walls that they picked out together. Every available surface is covered in plants that Jamie teaches Dani how to take care of, and they buy a creaky couch that feels like heaven, especially when they fall asleep on opposite ends of it and wake up with their legs entwined. 

It works, and it’s _theirs_. It’s more than Dani ever could’ve hoped for.

And yet, every time she looks into the mirror, a stranger stares back. It’s not the heavy, blinding glare of headlights reflected out of a pair of cracked glasses, but rather a blemish in the form of one brown eye where a sky blue iris used to be.

Still, Dani does her best to push it out of her mind.

They celebrate Christmas, and another. With secretive smiles, they organise the ribbons they use to tie bouquets into a pastel rainbow for Valentine’s day. A birthday, Halloween, and so many holidays in between. Some they spend alone, others with friends – Owen flies in for one memorable New Year’s Eve, and they spend it drunk on the already mentioned couch as celebratory fireworks and loud cheers come from the outside, reminiscing about the good times at Bly Manor. About the early mornings with Dani’s god-awful attempts at tea. About Miles and Flora and all the life they brought to the sprawling estate.

About Hannah. Her never-ending care, and light, her faith and her strength and– and. No sentence written, said, or thought about Hannah should have a period and yet they all do, and it’s all the three of them can do to keep thinking, saying, and writing them so that the memory of her never fades.

It’s with her in mind that Dani picks a ring – a simple, thin band of gold with a tiny golden heart in a crown being cradled in cupped hands. It almost feels like Hannah guides her hand towards it; she always did have great taste in jewellery.

“Someone special?” the seller asks with a twinkle in her eye, and Dani smiles.

“Extremely,” she replies and hands the money over, placing the box in her bag. It stays there for hours, days, weeks.

It stays until Dani’s face doesn’t have eyes or mouth in the reflection in the glass door of their flower shop, and suddenly there’s a song playing in the dark corners of her mind that sounds suspiciously like the garbled beginnings of _O Willow Waly._ Time, that cursed fickle thing, twists again to work against her; she doesn’t know if there’ll be another Christmas, birthday, or Valentine’s Day. She doesn’t know if there’ll be another year, or if it’ll be a matter of months, or even days.

All Dani knows is that she wants to spend them all with Jamie.

So she buries the ring in the roots of a plant – metaphors are important, after all – and says words that don’t even _begin_ to cover the extent of her feelings when Jamie finds it. She watches tears well up in her eyes, and the song in her mind changes to a soft piano melody that rings out and glows, vibrant, with every note.

“We can wear the rings, and we’ll know. And that’s enough for me, if it’s enough for you,” Dani says, and the Lady sleeps.

“I reckon that’s enough for me, yeah,” Jamie replies with a wet laugh, and then they’re kissing and everything is perfect for one golden moment.

They visit Owen in Paris, in the restaurant with the corny name and food that reminds them of that summer in Bly. He’s happy, undeniably so, but there’s a twinge of sadness to his eyes that will never fade, like the picture of Hannah in black and white hanging on the wall and watching over them once again.

The conversation is lovely, and Dani ignores her eyeless reflection in the silverware and polished pitchers until Owen says that the kids have forgotten about what happened at Bly, and Dani burns. With envy, with pain, with the itch of _her_ coming back yet again.

“Do you think Henry will tell them?” she asks, and Jamie’s hand clenches for a moment on her thigh.

“Would you?” Owen asks. “Let them live their lives as they should. Without anything hanging over them,” he says and that’s not fair. That’s not fair at all, Dani thinks and hates herself for thinking it. She should be glad that those kids, those poor children that have lost so many people dear to them, don’t remember, that they can live without the burden of Bly pressing down on them.

Why does she have to remember, though? Why does she have to have the pressure sitting on her ribcage, feeling like it’ll collapse at any moment? Why does she have a brown eye where blue is supposed to be, and _O Willow Waly_ playing on repeat in her head? Why _her_?

Dani feels like a rubber band being pulled taut, and with every passing day she sees her true reflection less and less, until all there seems to be is hair too dark to be her own, a faceless face and a black hole in the pit of her stomach growing larger by the minute. It’s not scary, it’s not unsettling, it’s simply _constant_. Dani doesn’t know if she is Dani anymore, or if it’s all a vision, a fusion of the two of them until there’s no Dani or The Lady, but simply _them_.

What did the children call it? Tucked away? ...Is she? 

Maybe if she stares at the reflection up close, she’ll know for sure.

Which she? Dani or The Lady? Is there even a difference anymore?

Jamie finds her at the edge of the overflowing tub, face mere centimeters from the surface of the water. There’s panic flickering behind the fake calm in her eyes and Dani – _she’s Dani, she knows now; she's always Dani around Jamie_ – feels sick. She can’t keep doing this to Jaime. She can’t keep doing this to herself. It’s not fair to either of them, and the last thing Dani wants in this awful fucking world is to hurt Jamie.

It all spills out of her, like the water from the tub, and Dani’s already crying but the look on Jamie’s face is more heartbreaking than Dani ever could’ve imagined. Dani never wanted this; never wanted ghosts and death and a murderous, vengeful being living in her. Why couldn’t she be a normal fucking girl who fell in love with another girl and they lived happily ever after? 

“If you can’t feel anything, then I’ll feel everything for the both of us. But no one is going anywhere, okay?” Jamie says, and it’s like hitting the brakes after going a hundred miles an hour. “You’re still here.” 

She is. But she’s here on borrowed time, and they both know it.

“What if I’m here sitting next to you, but I’m just really her?” Dani asks finally, echoing Jamie’s sobs and shuddering breaths.

“One day at a time,” Jamie says instead of replying, their mantra and their downfall.

One day is too much to ask it turns out, when Dani wakes up from a nightmare right into another one, with her hand hovering above Jamie’s throat. 

No. No. She is not going to do this.

The Lady has grown restless, stuck in a cage she accepted, and wants. She _wants_. Dani knows this intrinsically; feels it in her very bones. And she refuses.

The note she scrawls for Jamie is messy and brief and so painful Dani aches all over; even the ache of love for Jamie didn’t prepare her for this. She leaves it on the nightstand, kisses her gardener on the forehead one last time – softly, gently, so as not to wake her – and leaves.

On the flight, Dani sleeps. 

She dreams of the beginning, the first look across the kitchen and not even an introduction. The interrupted panic attack and the teasing glances across the garden as Dani overlooked the siblings’ punishment. The night by the bonfire, the joking remarks in the greenhouse as Jamie threatened to beat up Dani’s ‘dead boyfriend’. The relieved "thank fuck" Jamie exhaled, and the taste of her giddy smile against Dani's mouth. The early morning and the late night, the grove of moonflowers in the dark. The stolen kisses in the hallways of the Manor, the whispered promises. The hushed _“do you want company?”_ after everything. The golden glow that shrouded every moment then, and every moment since.

Dani wakes and finally understands what the kids meant when they said _tucked away_.

She arrives at Bly exhausted but wanders the estate anyway, hand brushing gently against the still impeccable plants. A new gardener at the estate. She hopes this one has more luck in love than the previous; falling in love with a broken woman sharing a body with a ghost doesn’t seem like it would lead to a very happy future.

(Dani knew that all along. She was selfish for years, perhaps even cruel, but… she can’t bring herself to regret them.)

“Well, you're the last person I ever expected to see here,” says a male voice behind Dani and she turns around to see Owen, hands in his pockets and a melancholic smile playing at his lips.

“I could say the same,” Dani replies, tilting her head and trying to remember how she found herself at the front door. She was just in the gardens a moment ago.

“Surprise,” Owen says flatly, no trace of humour in his voice, and holds out his arm with a small flourish. “Walk with me?”

She acquiesces with a small nod, and links the crook of her arm with his. What's a few more minutes delaying the inevitable? The bottom of the lake isn't going anywhere, and neither is the Lady. And so Dani walks.

They stride in silence for a while; Owen turns his head when they pass the well where Hannah fell _(was pushed in)_ and refuses to look at it and there's a pang of sympathy in Dani's chest where the Lady has failed to burrow.

“You can't stop me,” Dani says after a while, and really she means _her_ not _me_ , because if it was up to Dani she would be in bed with Jamie, aching in a completely different way to the way she aches now.

“I know,” Owen says with a small shrug. They keep walking in silence, Dani's gaze drifting to the master bedroom at the top floor more often than not, bare feet (where did her shoes go?) almost itching to walk a path that’s been walked so many times before. Never in these feet, though; never in this body.

“You know, my life's pretty great right now,” Owen starts out of the blue, gracefully ignoring Dani's distraction. “Got the restaurant I've dreamed of opening, I'm out of Bly; hell, even got a decent amount of dough–” here, he pauses for a meaningful eyebrow wiggle and an exaggerated wink, “–to blow.”

“I'm happy for you, Owen,” Dani says, and she really, honestly is; everyone from Bly is moving on, it seems, except for her. And Jamie, who keeps being dragged back by Dani, unwillingly and cruelly.

“Thank you love, but I'm not trying to rub it in. There's a point to this, I promise. The thing is, I've got everything I've ever wanted, but there are still days where I feel like dying would be the happier option,” he says and Dani recoils, snapped out of her stupor for a moment. “I've never thought of going through with it, but ever since Hannah died… well, there's an emptiness.”

“I'm sorry, Owen, I didn't know–”

“No one did,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn't want you to. My point is, you're not gone when you die, but it matters so, _so_ much how and when you go for the rest of us that stay. Every day I ask myself if things would be different, if Hannah would be alive, had I done something differently, and I can’t move past it. The dead don't suffer when they go; it's us living that do when they leave us behind.”

It takes a moment for his words to bury themselves underneath her skin, dig into the space between her vertebrae, into her spinal cord and cling tight there, quieting the Lady for the first time in days. Dani recalls something similar Hannah had said once: _funerals are for the living; it’s up to the living to decide what they can and cannot bear._

It’s almost unsettling how similar they are– were. Dani hopes that there’s a universe in which they’re together and happy. (One does not go without the other when it comes to Owen and Hannah.)

“You can’t stop me,” Dani says again, eventually, though it comes out weaker than it did the first time. Jamie will move on, surely; and even if she doesn’t, better she be alone and _alive_ than murdered in her sleep by a vengeful spirit residing in her wife.

“I know,” Owen repeats, and gives a small smile. “I was never meant to. I’m just here to buy her some time.”

Buy her some..?

No. _No._

“Hey there, Poppins.”

They’re at the lake and she’s unsure how they got there, Owen’s untangled his arm from hers and has turned to leave, and Dani wants to scream. She wants to rage and cry and shake Jamie – brave, stubborn Jamie – and tell her to go back, run away, don’t make this harder than it needs to be.

Of course she wouldn’t listen. Of course she’d try one last time.

Dani loves her more than anyone or anything in this cruel fucking world, and it’s not fair to make her do this, not fair to make her choose when there’s actually no choice at all, only an illusion of one to make this all the more painful.

But when has anything been fair in Dani’s life?

“Jamie–”

“Pretty hardcore game of hide and seek you had goin’ on here,” Jamie said, all forced cheer and stiff limbs, “nearly had me beat.”

“Please–”

“Here’s the thing, love,” Jamie continues, speaking over Dani and there’s the itch again, the Lady is awake and wants _out_ – or rather, wants back in, and will drag anyone down with her. The drops of sand in Dani’s hourglass are slipping, fewer and fewer in number, but Jamie will not be deterred. “You and I… we said we’d do this thing together. _Company in the jungle_ , we said, didn’t we? You, me, us, remember? So why’re you makin’ this decision without me?”

“Because you’re the one person in this world I’d never risk hurting,” Dani replies finally, and there are tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat and grief, insurmountable grief, clawing its way out of her chest for all the time together they never got to have. “And there really is no choice for me about that at all.”

“But there _is_ a choice, Dani, and we’re going to make it together, okay? I will respect whatever decision you make but let me help you make it,” Jamie says, cradling Dani’s face, thumbs gently trailing over her cheekbones and the itch abates again, just a little. “Now you listen to me: I know it hurts. I know it hurts so much to have her in the back of your head and to fight her every damn day but you are _not_ her, Dani, and you will _never_ be her. You’ve sacrificed yourself over and over for others, love; it’s time to be selfish now.”

“I can’t risk it, Jamie,” Dani sobs, forehead dropping onto Jamie’s. She can feel her warm breath on her own face; breath that Jamie still has because Dani barely managed to stop her demons – well, _one_ demon – from escaping. “Last night, my hand was around your throat and I was so close to hurting you and I– I can live without me. I haven’t been me in a while, I think, but you– if she touched you–”

“She won’t.” Jamie has never sounded so resolute, her face never this stern. A statue carved of marble. Only her eyes shine with unshed tears and Dani aches again. “She _can’t_. Your hand was around my throat but she didn’t kill me because _you_ stopped her, Dani, and I know you’ll do it again and again as many times as it takes because we deserve a lifetime together, love, and we can have it if you’ll _let_ us. I know we said our days were numbered but I was never going to be noble enough to let you go.”

Dani can feel herself cracking; brittle like glass and just as sharp, and if she breaks now it’s Jamie who’ll end up bleeding, Jamie who’ll suffer, and Dani can’t–

“Please, if there’s any trace left of the Dani I love, the Dani I want to spend my life with, then _fight_ for us. I’ll fight with you every step of the way– hell, I’ll tie ya to the damn bed every night if I have to, just please come back to me,” Jamie says, words wobbly and syllables meshing, accent and emotions working together to blur her speech together but Dani hears every word as clear as it was written in ink; feels them scratching themselves into her skin with the gentle hand of Jamie’s absent-minded caresses.

But the Lady– she pulls and pulls, a dark hole with her own gravity dragging Dani into her, but in the end Dani makes a choice, and Dani fights back with all her might. 

She does it for the fingers on her cheeks, cradling her face, warming the skin cold from the water of the lake; she does it for the lips so near her own, the lips she’s kissed a hundred, a thousand, a million times and will kiss a million times more, god damn it; she does it for the eyes, lighter than hers and shifting with the moods, bright and glinting and full of mischief. And ultimately, she does it for herself, too; she deserves at least a lifetime with the love of her life and will settle for nothing less. Dani fights and fights and fights until she’s drained and hollow and hurting so much it feels like she can’t breathe and–

–and the Lady finally, blessedly, sleeps.

“There you are, my love,” Jamie says when Dani slumps in her arms, panting, shaking, and finally herself again. Not whole, not unbroken, but herself, and that’s all that matters.

The first word out of Dani’s mouth – _her_ mouth, not the Lady’s – is a whimper of her lover’s name, and Jamie shakes along with her as she holds her tight, sopping wet and numbingly cold. 

“I shouldn’t have done this, Jamie,” Dani sobs, tears soaking the collar of Jamie’s plaid shirt as she holds her close; a hypocrite, Dani is a hypocrite, and a selfish one at that, and she shouldn’t have done this, she should’ve let Jamie go. “It’s– selfish, I’m selfish– I shouldn’t have done this,” she repeats, words breaking over her tongue.

“No I am, and asking you to stay and endure the torment was,” Jamie says, carding her fingers gently through the damp strands of Dani’s hair, “and y’know what? I don’t regret it one bit.”

“What if she– what if I hurt you?” It’s nigh-impossible to look Jamie in the eye, knowing she’ll look back and see the iris that doesn’t belong, so Dani mumbles her fears into the soothing warmth of Jamie’s neck. “I can’t– let me–”

“Dani, love, deep breaths,” Jamie says, moving back to see her face and cradling it gently. “Listen to me. One day at a time, okay? I promise you that you’ll _never_ be alone in this if you promise you’ll take a chance, alright? You promise?”

If there’s one thing Dani’s learned throughout her life is that promises aren’t worth the breath they are made from. She makes it anyway, with stuttering breaths and shaking hands; and as it passes her lips, it feels golden.

* * *

**⁂**

_“i’ll take care of you.”_ _  
__“it’s rotten work.”_ _  
__“not to me. not if it’s_ **_you_** _.”_

_-anne carson_

**⁂**

* * *

On their long way back home in the tight confines of the airplane, Jamie tells Dani in hushed tones how she called Owen, panicked and crying; how he managed to calm her down and advised her to call Henry while he got on a plane at midnight in Paris, just an hour after Jamie called, to go to the one place he never wanted to return to. Henry, on his end, pulled some strings with no questions asked and got her on a charter flight, refusing to take any of her money in return. For a moment, Dani is overwhelmed with how much she loves these people, this makeshift family they have, dispersed around the world but somehow always together in spirit and shared past.

Crossing the doorstep of their apartment feels similar to how Dani felt when she would enter the church on Sundays back when she was a teenager; a little like an imposter and a lot like a sinner.

Dani’s favourite jacket is still hanging on the coat rack, along with Jamie’s; shoes messily lined up by the door and mail still piled up, unopened, on the coffee table. The pot kettle on the stove. It looks exactly like it did when Dani left it for what she thought it would be the last time, and yet feels completely different. The shadow of the Lady is present but in a completely different way; Dani’s Beast in the jungle has already pounced. And they survived.

She’s not naïve enough to think that this is the end – of course it isn’t, and it never will be. She’ll have to fight her for the rest of her life, and it’ll be torture. There’ll be days when the Lady wakes so violently and cruelly that Dani will once again consider going back to Bly. She knows this, and Jamie knows this. And they’ll work together on it.

When Jamie closes the door behind them with a soft click, silence threatens to overtake them, but Jamie doesn’t let it. Instead she guides Dani by the hand towards the bathroom, and draws a bath. Jamie helps her undress, ignoring the tremors in Dani’s hand as she sheds her layers right onto the floor of the bathroom, and then undresses herself, the oversized brown plaid shirt she sleeps in landing in a heap next to Dani’s clothes, along with her jeans and socks. 

Jamie enters first, and Dani settles into the space between her legs, skin to skin, and somehow that’s enough to break her all over again, but Jamie holds her firmly together; a vein of silver gluing together her broken shards.

In the end, it’s Jamie who breaks instead; it starts with a tiny sniffle and grows and grows until she’s letting her sobs out into the skin of Dani’s back, arms around her and holding her tight, as if afraid to let go. Dani places her warmed hands onto Jamie’s forearms and they hold each other, until Jamie is all cried out and the water has cooled.

“I almost lost you, Dani,” Jamie murmurs into her back, forehead on the nape of Dani’s neck and Dani shivers, feeling the words against her spine more than she hears them.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and thinks, _I love you_ ; thinks, _I don’t deserve you_ ; thinks, _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_.

“It’s okay, just next time maybe talk to me before you go and run across half the world, yeah?” Jamie says with a sad smile that she kisses into Dani’s skin. Dani aches again.

She spends a week in bed, exhausted and hollowed out, and Jamie closes the flower shop and refuses to leave her side unless Dani specifically asks. Dani doesn’t; Dani would never.

Afterwards, Dani picks herself up and goes back to work. She goes downstairs and sells and arranges and tends flowers, and though Jamie tries to convince her to just rest, Dani waves her off; it’s better if she is preoccupied, better if she spends no time dwelling on everything that happened and everything that _almost_ did.

So Jamie comes home one day from a suspiciously long grocery run, arms laden with bags, and Dani watches, confused, as she starts unloading the bag. It looks like she’s robbed an arts and crafts workshop, taking out a brown leather journal, sketchpad, easel, canvases, and everything from charcoal and pencils to acrylics and watercolours. 

“Here’s the thing,” she starts, barrelling straight past any greetings or introductions, and Dani stifles a small smile. The upturn of her lips feels unfamiliar and stilted. “I know I’ll never fully and _truly_ understand what you’re going through. I dunno if there’s a person alive who _could_ understand, but I know that it’s hard to talk about it, and I know you sometimes just can’t find the words to say everything you want to say. So,” she points at the pile of supplies on the counter, “you don’t have to say it. You can write it or sketch it or paint it, so that when it gets hard to speak you can let it out another way. And I’m _always_ here to talk, okay Poppins?”

Dani still remembers the sweet taste of Jamie’s giddy smile in the greenhouse that night at Bly. This kiss somehow tastes the same, but enhanced; and it feels like stepping into the sunlight after months spent in the rain. 

And so Dani paints, and writes, and doesn’t know or particularly care if she does either very well; sometimes she rages against the canvas, lines harsh and colours almost explosive, and sometimes paints in pastels, melancholic and feeling like a delicate glass figurine, with the acoustic mixtape Jamie made her playing quietly in the background. 

It’s a cleanse; a catharsis. 

It happens more than once that Jamie finds her staring blankly at the wall or avoiding any reflective surfaces after such sessions, and they always leave her feeling hollow and raw like an open wound; but the wound finally feels clean and healthy, healing properly for the first time in years.

Some days are worse than others.

Days when Dani looks at Jamie and fears that she’ll get tucked away against her will as something horrifying happens to her. Days when she feels a desperate longing and darkness in herself that are not her own, and days when she wants to carve them out with a knife until she’s empty and herself again. There’s no canvas or paint, no written word that can purge the feeling of the Lady waking in Dani, the itch becoming a dull scratch against the base of her brain, feeling herself fade away and not seeing her reflection in mirrors. 

But there are days where Jamie stretches out half-naked next to her on the bed, cursing the crappy air conditioning in their apartment in her thick Northern accent as the last rays of the day’s waning sunlight beam through the window and faint shadows from their practically translucent curtains dance on the worn down hardwood floors. The light plays on the curve of her spine and reflects off the golden band around Dani’s ring finger; Jamie’s skin prickles with goosebumps when Dani tenderly runs the tip of her finger along the muscles, smiling gently when she shivers, and the Lady recedes back into her cold and murky depths. 

Jamie brings home a stray cat one day because _of course_ she would; it’s in her very nature to nurse things back to life – dying plants and stray kittens and lonely, guilt-ridden _au pairs_. The cat is a tiny, trembling mess of white and orange fur, and Dani’s refusals and resolve crumble as Jamie and the furball seem to give her identical wide, pleading eyes. Jamie names her Calla and she acts like she owns the house; they both love her to bits.

Often, Dani melts against Jamie on the couch, legs outstretched over the side of the couch and head cushioned in her wife’s lap as Jamie reads and cards her fingers through Dani’s hair absent-mindledly. Dani reaches up and grabs Jamie’s hand at some point, and Jamie always gets that small, secretive smile on her face, eyes not straying from the page as she interlocks their fingers and runs her thumb tenderly against Dani’s hand.

It’s those days that etch themselves into Dani’s mind, burn themselves into the backs of her eyelids, and she sees them every time she closes her eyes. It’s the almost worn out mixtape or the crackly sound of their vinyls as they make meals in comfortable silence, following a practiced choreography of moving around each other in their tiny, plant-filled kitchen. It’s the tears that well up in Jamie’s eyes one day as she looks at Dani from where she’s hopped up on the countertop, watching her cook, and the watery smile she gives at Dani’s questioning look.

“You’re humming along to it, Poppins,” she sniffles, tilting her head towards their record player, from which a female voice croons softly. “I haven’t heard you sing in ages.”

When Dani kisses her, their smiles colliding in a way that’s achingly familiar, she feels warmth bloom inside her ribcage.

She convinces Jamie to get a dog a year after Jamie brings Calla home – she’s always been more of a dog person, after all; the adorable mutt they bring back from the shelter they name Kalanchoe – Kal for short – and he’s often playful, but quiet and fiercely protective at times, too. He reminds Dani of Jamie.

When he scratches one too many marks into their already worn down floors, and there is no more space for the plants Jamie keeps bringing home, they decide to move. The flat is great, and it’s the first place they truly called home after the Manor, but it’s not nearly big enough anymore. _Not big enough for a family_ , Dani’s mind supplies sometimes, and she finds herself entertaining thoughts along the same lines more and more often. She doesn’t say a word to Jamie. Not yet.

They find a decent house in a small neighbourhood with lots of parks and little traffic; it’s got a backyard big enough to make a tiny garden, and enough room for three or four people (or two people, a dog, and a cat who acts like she owns the place) to live comfortably. Once the agent finishes showing them around, Dani locks eyes with Jamie and knows intrinsically, _this is it._

The minor fixes around the place Dani leaves to Jamie’s more than capable hands. But decorating they do together; they turn the upstairs room into a small studio for Dani and a reading room for Jamie, and it takes them hours of bickering and frustration to assemble the bed (and then hours of heated, distracting kisses to break it in). But there is finally enough space for all of their books, and their plants, and the alarming number of pet toys that keeps growing.

The first people that come over to welcome them into the neighbourhood are two men who live next door that smile warmly and bring over apple pie. Louis, a tall black man, speaks with a slight lilt to his words that reminds Dani of summer trips to New Orleans, and the other man introduces himself as Jack, holding out a pale hand for a firm handshake.

They take one glance at Jamie and Dani’s matching Claddagh rings and offer even warmer, completely understanding smiles, and when Jamie introduces herself as Jamie Clayton, Dani’s heart starts thundering in her throat, choking her up and threatening to spill over right into Jamie’s hands.

The other neighbours are not nearly as warm, especially when Jamie corrects their snide assumptions – _wow, I couldn’t handle living with my sister –_ without a pause, saying _wife, actually_ with all the nonchalance and indifference of someone who simply doesn’t give a damn anymore. Dani stifles a snort at the scandalized looks they barely manage to hide; they won’t be getting invited to any neighbourhood barbecues, that’s for sure.

But it’s worth it to kiss away the proud, defiant smirk that stays on Jamie’s lips afterwards, as it melts into something far more sultry and scorching.

They settle into their new home with an ease neither expects; but soon the house is marked with newly built memories, with laughter and Jamie’s rock and blues vinyls and some of Dani’s paintings hanging on the walls; Owen’s spices and handwritten recipes, and Henry and the Wingrave siblings’ postcards, letters, and photographs.

They form a quick friendship with Louis and Jack that starts with their homemade apple pie, and transforms into movie marathons and boardgame nights and double dates where people think Dani and Jamie are married to them and not each other, which never fails to make Jamie snicker and Dani roll her eyes fondly.

Life is nice; it’s warm and bright, and the Lady sleeps more often than not. Dani’s bad days are few and far in between, and Jamie’s touch always soothes her anyway. 

Every day during the summer, they spend their late afternoons and early evenings in the backyard, as Jamie grumbles about Kal digging and messing up her garden again and Dani sits in her woven chair on the porch with his head in her lap, his tongue lolling as she pets him, and she offers the most innocent look she can accomplish to Jamie. 

(“He’s _your_ dog, teach him not to dig up my garden!”

“Why is he only _my_ dog when he does something bad?”)

Dani can’t explain why she does it. She’s watching Jamie whose hands are buried in the dirt around the batch of flowers she’s just planted as the sun sets and bathes her in gold; the line of her jaw, the strength of her chin and the curve of her lips silhouetted against the light, and she looks ethereal. Radiant and gentle and so, so lovely, and Dani aches again with the strength of her feelings; they threaten to swallow her like a wave and she would gladly go under, content to bask in the warmth forever.

Jamie looks up and gives her a smile, eyes beginning to crinkle at the edges with the delicacy of age, and the wave towers, moves, and breaks over Dani.

“How do you feel about children?”

Jamie stiffens. Looks up from the flowers, jaw clenched and eyes wide, and behind her irises Dani finds disbelief, and surprise, and _hope_. 

“What d’you mean? 'Cause they can be downright gremlins sometimes,” she dodges.

“I mean...children. Having one. Adopting one. Whichever,” Dani says, stilted and rushed at once, like she’s afraid to get the words out but also rushing them out of her mouth like they’ll disappear if she doesn’t let them breathe.

“Poppins...are you asking me what I think you’re asking?” Jamie asks, standing up and approaching, and ignores Kal as he jumps around her feet, begging for scratches. Her eyes are solely on Dani.

“I– I think so, yeah,” Dani says, and then stands, moving the blanket off her lap and meeting Jamie at the bottom of the stairs from the porch to the back yard. Jamie curls a pinkie around Dani’s.

“You sure?” Jamie asks, and once again Dani flies back to a moment so different from and yet so similar to this one, and warmth courses through her from the point where their fingers touch and spreads, curling up behind her ribs. How much things have changed, and how much they’ve stayed the same.

“Yeah,” Dani says, giving the same shy smile she’d given that night in the greenhouse, and Jamie’s blinding smile is radiant; it etches itself into her retinas and stays there as Dani tastes it, enveloped in Jamie’s arms and the earthy smell of her. 

Later, when they are asleep, naked and cuddled up under the sheets, the Lady wakes in Dani and gives her horrifying dreams in her place. Gives her Jamie, being dragged underwater, unable to breathe and staring at her, at Dani, like she’s been betrayed, like she doesn’t know who Dani is anymore. Gives her a child, faceless and blank, like a doll ready for its features to be sewn on. It doesn’t get them, as it drowns and floats down slowly, gently, to lie next to the other body lying at the bottom of the lake between the reeds. Gives her a fragile neck, getting squeezed and squeezed and–

She wakes with a start, covered in sweat and shaking, and her hands are clenched like they’re crushing something, something fragile and important– and then Jamie is there, awake from the moment Dani startled herself into waking.

She shushes Dani softly like she did that moment in the lake, when they were in the water and Flora was clinging tightly to Dani’s side; Jamie leans her forehead on Dani’s the same way, more than fifteen years later, and holds her like she’ll break any moment. Maybe she already has. Maybe she’s been broken from that moment on, and she’ll never be whole again.

“I was– there was–” Dani tries, and tries, and tries, but Jamie doesn’t need her words to know how she feels, doesn’t need it said to know what to do. She holds Dani as she breaks apart, shuddering in her arms and letting out sobs against the skin of Jamie’s neck, until she’s cried out and there’s nothing left.

“You won’t hurt them,” Jamie says once Dani’s stopped shaking. “I know you’re afraid she’ll make you do something bad, but whichever kid we end up adopting will be nothing but lucky to have you as their mum, alright?”

Of course Jamie knows the underlying fear Dani’s felt from the first moment she let herself think – dream – about kids, about making a family with Jamie. Of course she knows. She knows Dani better than anyone else in the world.

“Okay,” Dani says, breath still shaky, “okay.”

When they adopt, quite a while later, it’s a pair of siblings: Daniel, a tall, lanky teenager a bit too skinny for Dani’s taste, with unruly dark hair and cocoa eyes that beam with intelligence, and his little sister, Sofia, whose dark eyes match his. 

It takes the kids a while to open up, and understandably so; Daniel doesn’t like to talk about their previous experiences with foster parents at all, but Sofia sometimes says things that simultaneously worry Dani and fill her with rage so blinding she feels like she could murder someone. They keep their bags under their beds, refusing politely to have Jamie take them to the attic, and they sometimes flinch at sudden movements.

Jamie, with her patience and kind, understanding eyes, aches at the pain these kids have been in; Dani can see it written plainly on her face every time her eyes land on Daniel helping Sofia with her homework, or when she catches the momentary shock that inevitably glints in Daniel’s eyes for a split second every morning when they see heaps of food waiting for them. It’s in her nature to nurture, to heal, and every time doubt shows in both kids when Jamie mentions any future plans as if they don’t believe they’ll be here that long, Dani can feel Jamie’s hurt like a physical cut on her skin. 

One night, when Jamie takes longer than Dani expects to tuck Sofia in (the little girl’s first shy, whispered plea to be tucked in felt like an astronomical victory; Jamie had given a watery smile and broken down in Dani’s arms later that night), Dani goes to the siblings’ room to check up on them. 

“...introduce herself to the new _au pair_. She barely acknowledged her at all; simply treated her as if she’d always been there. The others in the room just assumed they’d already met, which, if she were honest, was how the _au pair_ felt when she first saw the young woman.”

Dani leans on the doorway, crossing her arms and watching with a fond smile as Sofia looks up at Jamie, eyelids heavy and barely still awake, and even Daniel seems to be listening as he pretends to be bored on his bed. If Sofia’s hair and skin were a little lighter and her face a little more elongated, she would look the spitting image of Flora, and it makes something warm and tight settle in Dani's chest.

When Sofia looks at Dani, Jamie turns; her eyes light up along with her smile when she sees Dani and the warmth spreads. 

“Looks like that’s it for the night, loves, the missus seems to think it’s past my bedtime,” Jamie says with an overexaggerated wink at Sofia, who giggles and yawns immediately after, and even Daniel cracks a smile. “Night.” With a kiss on her forehead, Jamie gets up from the bed and walks towards the door, closing it softly behind her.

“So, that’s how I felt when I first saw you, huh?” Dani teases, a coy smile on her face when she takes Jamie’s hand, drawing her nearer as Jamie bites her lip and lets herself be pulled closer.

“I mean...am I wrong?” Jamie asks with a confident, lopsided smile, voice low and hand sneaking under Dani’s t-shirt, splaying sinfully low on her lower back.

“Mm, not necessarily,” Dani says, shivering as Jamie applies delightful pressure to press her even closer.

“That’s what I thought,” Jamie whispers, then lowers her head to press teasing little kisses to the line of Dani’s jaw.

“Cockiness really isn’t your best look,” Dani says between pants and tiny moans she can’t help but let out as Jamie’s tantalizing mouth expertly makes its way down her neck.

“You seem to like it just fine,” Jamie murmurs with a smirk Dani can feel against her neck. She’s infuriating; Dani can’t get enough.

She drags Jamie to their room by the hand, muffled laughter trailing in their wake, and Dani prays the kids are already asleep and won’t be waking up any time soon; she plans to take her sweet time wiping that smirk off Jamie’s face.

“Isn’t the story a little too scary for the kids?” Dani asks later, and Jamie turns onto her side to face her, supporting her head on her hand. Moonlight streams through the open window, along with a breeze that carries the scent of flowers into the room. It makes Jamie shiver slightly, and Dani smiles at Jamie’s grimace.

“I’ll leave out all the gory details,” Jamie says as she trails her fingers lightly over Dani’s clavicle, and then Dani is shivering for a reason completely different than Jamie’s.

“Not sure how you’ll do that with the ending,” Dani says, smile turning bitter over memories of that night that she would rather forget, if possible. (It’s not.) Jamie’s sad smile reflects hers.

“I’ll change the ending; we did it once, we can do it again, can’t we?” she says softly, voice barely heard even in the dead silence of the room, and Dani remembers how traumatising it must have been, to see your partner on her way to certain death simply to save you.

“Always,” Dani replies and the kiss Jamie places on her lips soothes her insides, open and raw as if a day hasn’t passed since she crawled out of the lake with Flora clinging to her side and a part of her that wasn’t hers.

* * *

**⁂**

_“passed down like_ **_folk songs_** _,_ _  
__our love lasts_ **_so long_** _.”_

_-taylor swift_

**⁂**

* * *

Time used to be Dani’s greatest fear.

Time brought pain, and loss, and the possibility of her causing both. Time meant each moment that passed was a moment less she got to have with Jamie; a moment less she was herself.

Now, time means something different.

Time means seeing the laugh lines on Jamie’s face get deeper, and seeing her own appear; time means seeing Daniel and Sofia grow up, day after day, coming into themselves. Time means their kids getting comfortable, starting to heal their trauma, and the first time they call them “Ma” and “Mom” she and Jamie share a tear-filled look across the kitchen table, their fingers intertwining underneath it like a pair of teenagers.

Time means the walls of their house get filled with pictures: memories of beach days, where Dani can almost smell the salt on Jamie’s skin and hear the vibrant laughter of Daniel and Sofia as she clings to his front like a koala, squealing, and he bends over and dips her into the ocean; pictures of Daniel’s high school graduation, and his first day of college; of Sofia’s first basketball match and her grinning afterwards even though they lost, because she got to play. Of family dinners, and birthdays, and holidays; neighbourhood barbecues with Louis and Jack and a few other open-minded neighbours.

Time means Sofia calling Owen “Uncle Chef” whenever he visits, and him spoiling them rotten with food and various bits and bobs he knows they’ll like. Time means Flora calling from the other end of the country, voice giddy and bursting with happiness, to let them know her boyfriend proposed. Dani sheds more than a few tears because Flora’s voice, even sans the accent, rings with love and fondness; they’re the first people Flora has told, aside from Henry.

Time means Jamie hugging her from behind in the mornings as Dani makes breakfast (but not tea; never tea) and tucking her hair behind her ear, staring at Dani’s grey hairs fondly.

“You’re getting old, Poppins,” she says with a teasing smile, but there’s a note of muted surprise in her voice, like she can’t believe she gets to say it, can’t believe they’re growing older _together_. 

“Look who’s talking,” Dani says, lips quirking upwards as Jamie sticks her tongue out at her like a little kid. Dani can’t quite believe it either though, so she only places a soft kiss on Jamie’s lips and turns back to the stove, a shy smile on her face.

The kids tease them endlessly every time they see them mooning over each other – which is always – and Jamie always makes sure to kiss Dani extra obnoxiously in retaliation. Time means Dani can smile into the kiss and then stick her tongue out at Daniel and Sofia like her wife sticks it out at her, as their cat – Bluebell, the cat they adopted after Calla passed away – sneaks around the kitchen table, looking for scraps of food and Kal, now old and frail, saunters into the kitchen to see what the commotion is about. 

She can appreciate the little moments all the more.

Time means that with all the good days, the bad ones hit Dani that much harder; a tsunami after a peaceful sea. And perhaps it’s Flora’s engagement, and the wicked dreams that follow it, but Dani learns that time means a canvas ripped to shreds in frustration and anger born deep within her, where the bottom of the lake lies. Under the rips and the mess of black paint Dani had thrown at it, a face with no face stares at her, opaque and sinister. Because time means everything but healing completely, and Dani sometimes just wants it all to end. 

“Ma?”

It’s Daniel’s tentative question that rips her out of her reverie, and her head snaps up to meet his worried gaze. He stands at the entrance, probably having come home from college to surprise them, hoping for some family time and a break from classes. Instead, he gets to see her in the midst of her breakdown, surrounded by the remnants of a haunting painting, broken brushes, and black paint spilled everywhere, staining her hands like monochromatic blood. 

He doesn’t ask what happened, or if she’s okay. Instead, he drops his bags slowly, as if afraid he’ll startle her, and approaches cautiously, like one would approach a cornered, wounded animal. Dani watches with eyes red from tears and the lack of sleep, black droplets falling from her fingertips, as he kneels down next to her on the floor and then gathers her into his arms. She stains his jean jacket as he hugs her tight, letting her burrow her head into the crook of his neck and cry, inhaling wetly, his smell enveloping her.

Jamie finds them like that when she comes back from the flower shop some time later, kneeling on the floor of Dani’s art room; Daniel holds her and murmurs sweet comforts into the crown of her head as she trembles occasionally, sniffling. With a sad smile and a loving squeeze to Daniel’s shoulder, Jamie reaches for Dani, who offers her hands almost automatically, letting herself be pulled to her feet. 

Later, through jumbled flashes, Dani remembers Daniel and Jamie having a hushed conversation at the kitchen table, cups of tea steaming in their hands. Remembers how they looked up as she entered and there was no pity in their eyes, so different in colour yet so similar in the way they twinkled with sorrow and love and solace ready to be given. Remembers giving them a weak smile and them not asking for more, simply letting her sit at the table, fingers entwined with Jamie’s, while Daniel filled the silence with his stories from college.

Time means constantly working and working and then being pushed back down the hill anyway; a Sisyphean task in its most exhausting, heartbreaking form.

But time also means they get to hear Owen say “ _to truly love another person is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them_ ” at Flora’s rehearsal dinner and look at each other with fondness and warmth that rivals the young couple’s at the head of the table; get to watch Henry walk Flora down the aisle, eyes brimming with tears, and hold hands tightly as Flora and her fiancé exchange their vows. It means watching Owen get drunk and Miles take care of him, laughing, and the mood sombering a little as Owen mumbles something about Hannah as he sheds a tear.

“Dani, love,” Jamie says nonchalantly when Dani finds her afterwards, sitting in front of the lit fireplace with Flora as the girl wipes away her tears surreptitiously and Dani throws Jamie a questioning look, “you ready to go?” She kisses the back of Dani’s palm tenderly and Dani melts.

“Yeah, let me just say goodbye,” she says, then turns to Flora, opening her arms. “Come here, you. I’m so happy for you.”

Flora gives a watery smile and practically falls into Dani’s arms, holding her tight and whispering her thanks as Dani shushes her and rubs her hand over Flora’s back. Flora, who she watched grow up, first in person and then through photographs sent from around the world. Flora, the little kid who used “perfectly splendid” as a description for everything that summer in Bly; Flora, who tried to smear mashed potatoes over Miles’ face and then turned around and said things like “ _dead doesn’t mean gone_ ” at the age of eight. The same Flora Dani protected with her life and her soul in 1987, and for whom she would do the same thing all over again.

Time means that years later Owen calls them from France, shouting unintelligibly about TV and being happy for them, and then Daniel calls immediately after, telling them a bit more calmly to turn on their TV, right now. 

It means that Dani’s mouth drops open in surprise when she sees the pride flags on the crappy box TV in the back of the flower shop, and Jamie lets out a string of excited curses befitting her Northern heritage before she turns around to stare at Dani in disbelief, joy, and everything in between. They kiss in the back room of the flower shop, and hug so tightly it feels like their ribs will crack, surrounded by flowers and Jamie’s hands painting sonnets into Dani’s skin as she laughs and cries simultaneously into the crook of her neck.

Owen gives Jamie away, and Henry does the same for Dani when Jamie and her get married at the age of 55; it’s a small ceremony, but everyone they love is there: Owen, and Henry along with Flora and Miles, Daniel and Sofia, and a few family members and friends they’ve made over the years. They leave an empty seat for Hannah next to Owen, and feel her presence almost palpably; Dani hates that she didn’t get to see this, but a light breeze dances through the room and makes the flower petals in the arrangements Jamie made dance and sway, and Dani knows she’s there in spirit.

They cry when they say the vows, and cry when they put the rings on. There’s a lot of crying throughout the night, but Dani doesn’t think there have ever been this many happy tears in her life, so she takes it all in stride. Jamie had insisted on picking the song for the first dance, and as they sway to _I Shall Believe_ Jamie tells her it’s the song Dani hummed along to all those years, back in their shabby little apartment that was overflowing with plants. 

As they sway with their foreheads leaning on each other, Jamie tells her, _you look beautiful._ Tells her _, you_ **_always_ ** _look beautiful but today you’re radiant, love_. Tells her so many things without words, with just a look, with just a touch, that Dani wants to combust; she feels embers in her chest, golden and hot, that Jamie stokes just by being herself.

Dani wants to pinch herself. Wants to make sure she isn’t dreaming, isn’t tucked away, because surely her life could never be this good, surely she is at the bottom of the lake and this is a fever dream conjured by her long-lost mind to torture her some more. Surely Dani can’t possibly be this happy.

But she is, and the only thing she has to thank is time. 

Time that she’s spent as herself, time she’s spent with Jamie, with Daniel and Sofia; time that she stole from the Universe and doesn’t plan to ever give back. Time that the Lady tried to warp, tried to take away from her; and she had nearly succeeded, had it not been for Jamie, her beautiful, stubborn Jamie, who had refused to let her go. And Dani could not love her more.

Time passes.

It gets easier to separate herself from the Lady. Jamie’s got a theory – vague and disjointed, but plausible, about forgetting. About the stories of a woman long gone in memory but not in spirit, whose love, anguish, and the sting of betrayal kept her walking all those years, decades, centuries, who lost all sense of purpose but for the vaguest of motivations. With time, the Lady fades in Dani like she’s faded before; _a tickle way down at the bottom_. 

Sometimes rage and desperation flare up in Dani like a struck match, but burn out quickly when Jamie laughs, kisses her, sighs. When Daniel and Sofia smile, hug her, kiss her cheek. When Owen cracks a dumb joke, and Henry, Flora, and Miles call simply to chat, to hear her voice. The Lady sleeps, way down at the bottom, seldom at first but more as the years pass, and then the _waking_ doesn’t come. 

It doesn’t come.

* * *

**⁂**

_“i loved_ **_you_ ** _completely,_ _  
__and you loved_ **_me_ ** _the same. that’s all._ _  
__the rest is_ **_confetti_** _.”_

_-eleanor “nell” crain_

**⁂**

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> did we all have a fun time? i hope we had a fun time 
> 
> if you thought i wouldn't find a way to insert a tswift lyric in there you were sorely mistaken. also yes i ended it with That quote and what about it
> 
> if you want you can buy me a [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/joofarc), and feel free to come yell at me on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/bisexualdagger) or on my [tumblr](https://jo-of-arc.tumblr.com/), i cry about bly manor/jamie and dani on both <3
> 
> several Thoughts™:  
> \- i refuse to believe flora and miles (but flora esp) just “forgot” dani, and i refuse to believe henry “i don’t know how i could ever thank you” wingrave would let them. anyway flora and dani keep in constant touch and dani is the closest thing she has to a maternal figure send tweet  
> \- jamie: [reads one (1) book in the show]  
> me: and she was a bookworm, and loved to read, and also did i mention she loves books?  
> \- they are sick for not giving us their birthdays and thus making me do math


End file.
